Loading...Republic of Rome
We have had quite a few emails over the last little while with excited folks looking for some dates on Republic of Rome.
We are looking for this game to be done for this summer and to show you that we have some things going on we have included some of the new cards that have been done. Note that these are not final but pretty close.
The website has Republic of Rome up on it now but we don’t have box art, as soon as that is available we will post that.
With our new blog we are going to try and give updates on where our games are as they are in production, please don’t worry if you haven’t seen an update for some time. These things can sometimes happen overnight or over a period of months just based on the situation. All of our titles are unchanged and if there is not an update on the site, we don’t have news on it.
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By Powerwis, March 11, 2009 @ 11:08 am
Finally we have some good news !!!
Many thanks for letting us know.
The cards look well !
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By Grzech, March 11, 2009 @ 1:50 pm
Looks nice
I’m waiting to see board!
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By Keefe, March 11, 2009 @ 5:24 pm
Holy cow! That’s nice man.. Keep us updated!!! Thank you!!
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By Powerwis, March 12, 2009 @ 3:07 am
after looking again at my old french cards, i think that you should make the new cards more clearer (bold, better titles, etc.)
perhaps having a look at those old french cards could help you
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By Paul, March 12, 2009 @ 5:54 am
The cards are pretty but the MILITARY, LOYALTY and ORATORY numbers look tiny. They should be easily readable from across the board, like the INFLUENCE number. Same goes for the numbers on the pirates card, but not as important.
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By Chris Farrell, March 16, 2009 @ 4:19 pm
Great look to the cards. As a long-time Republic of Rome player, I’d just like to put up a few thoughts:
- One thing that always trips new players up and takes a little while to learn is that your Votes (which you use a lot) are Oratory + *Knights*. It would be very helpful to integrate that into the card design so that those two values were close together and of similar appearance so I don’t have to answer the question “how do I figure my votes?” ever again.
- Some of the game-critical values – Oratory, Military, the war strengths – are a little too small, and should be clearly visible at-a-glance. In particular, I think the strengths on the wars should be much larger and clearer, since that is the really important information players will reference it a lot. Also, the standoff and disaster numbers are very important factors in how strong/dangerous a war is, and they would be better to visually “bundle” with the actual strengths than to put them in the corners.
- Not sure how your board will look, but in the old AH version, wars would often end up stacked together if they were matching, or stacked with their leaders. It would be awesome if you could put the strengths, standoff, and disaster numbers and name all together in a strip down the side or across the top, along with the name, so that like wars and leaders could be clearly stacked together and still have all the important information visible. Things like the spoils of war, unrest reminder, etc., are not that important – the unrest reminder is probably on the unrest track – and don’t need to be prominent.
I guess the bottom line is that I think there are a few pieces of critical information that could be much more visible in my opinion. This would be me take on the hierarchy:
Most important (or important and easy to miss) and most visible:
Votes (Oratory + Knights)
War strength, standoff, and disaster
War drought effect, if any
Important but not as critical:
Influence
Popularity
Prior Consul
Military
War name/series
Less important:
Spoils of War
Loyalty
War aftermath (province creation)
Stuff that bears on optional rules (wars attacking provinces)
There is a lot of stuff going on in RoR, and a graphic design that highlights the important numbers I think would be very helpful. If nothing else, Votes = Oratory + Knights is a major deal that people do often have a hard time with because it’s not thematically intuitive. Similarly, standoff and disaster numbers are a very important part of the strength of a war, and they were tiny in the original and very easy to forget/miss/not factor in. Likewise, I think downplaying somewhat the importance of the stuff associated with persuasion – loyalty and to a lesser degree influence – might be nice because this is ultimately a less important part of the game than people typically think, *unless* we’re in a opposed statesmen (loyalty=0) situation.
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Torben Reply:
March 16th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
What a great comment, thank you Chris.
I have alerted all those in the production process to read your comment and take note of your suggestions.
We really appreciate suggestions and advice like this as it give us the opportunity to produce the best possible game we can.
Thank you once again.
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Allen Reply:
March 19th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
To add to Chris’s comment, numbers like loyalty, influence, and military often get read by people sitting around the table, not just the player who currently has that senator.
Love the improved look, just hoping to make it as usable as possible.
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By Powerwis, March 17, 2009 @ 12:53 am
Thanks Torben for listening us !
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By Hugues Lamy, March 17, 2009 @ 5:29 pm
A small icon to indicate which era the card belongs to could be nice. Something along I, II or III. That with cards numbering in case you ever print an erratum or an expension pack (Civil War deck anyone).
Thanks for your effort guys. Keep up the good work.
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By Alan, March 28, 2009 @ 5:39 am
Does it still come with metal coins for initial subscribers?
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Torben Reply:
March 31st, 2009 at 10:36 am
We were having trouble getting a good looking coin and getting the resolution on it from a manufacturer. If you have seen the bonus Municipium coins that were done in plastic you will see that those are really nice. We are going to look at plastic instead I think based on the product that was delivered in the past.
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Powerwis Reply:
April 1st, 2009 at 4:55 am
bad news ! just try to look at those from Ystari that were sold with the pre-order of “Sylla” => very very nice to play with them !
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By Jose Ramon, March 28, 2009 @ 7:23 pm
Hello.
Allen is correct,in play the players look other senators and is important the size of influence, military and loyalty.
I think that AH desing are good for play, a new edition don`t need change all desing, save old desing for good play and change only little things.
I agree with Chris in a lot of things, but the votes is a concept of rules and not of cards.
The stack of war cards is very import can see the numbers clear withot move the cards.
Sorry my bad english.
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By Powerwis, March 30, 2009 @ 4:05 am
Is it still Mike Doyle who does the Artwork of the game ?
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Torben Reply:
March 31st, 2009 at 10:38 am
No, Mike is really busy and unavailable for this title. We are working with Kurt Miller and Mark Poole for the artwork. These are two excellent artists that have a ton of experience and they are going to make this game “pop”.
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Powerwis Reply:
April 9th, 2009 at 12:28 am
no metal coins, no Mike Doyle => all the strong titles of the beginning vanished…
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By Gilbert Collins, April 1, 2009 @ 5:58 am
Echoing a few comments by others. I think the font and size are a little weak on the cards. I would get rid of that particular font and go with something like Times Roman or Book Antiqua. But the main thing is size and boldness. The cards demonstrated look weak.
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By Belisarius, April 4, 2009 @ 9:38 pm
Anything but Times New Roman! That is the worst font ever (or at least most overused since it’s the default font in MS Word). There are tons of legible, stylish fonts. Garamond, Book Antiqua (we agree on that), or any of a number of sans serif fonts might be better.
There are even a few “carved” looking fonts you could use for the title and then something legible for the “meat” of the card.
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By Nelson, April 10, 2009 @ 2:46 pm
I’m going to add my voice to all those who said that the font used for the cards is not what I would have choosen. As far as readability is concerned, it could be better. And for the look and feel of the game, I think that a quick search on google with the words « ancient rome writing » will convince you that the Papyrus kind of font was not what the Romans were using. I would suggest using a capital serif font which would be a lot closer to how Romans used to write.
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By Alkibiades, April 19, 2009 @ 1:18 pm
I have been waiting for this game to be republicked for years now, and I wouldn´t mind if there was another delay, provided that the final result is satisfactory or even delightful. Personally, I would suggest a clear, functional and still appealing Roman look with less pink and more red and with quality Roman style illustrations instead of the current clipart ones. I would prefer simple frame lines to the current fancy ones. For the background I would suggest a clear choice: Either keep the whole card in a scroll-like design or get rid of the playful background. Reediting this great game is such a fantastic opportunity – please don´t blow it!
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By Powerwis, April 26, 2009 @ 2:29 pm
Torben, can you give us some news ? (your last answers are already one month old)
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Torben Reply:
April 29th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
The artist is nearly done, we are just going over a few more things and we should be able to show you what we have.
Thank you once again for all of the feedback, it’s really helped us get this game looking fantastic.
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Powerwis Reply:
April 30th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Thanks to you for listening us and staying in touch with us !
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By Kirby, November 30, 2009 @ 2:14 pm
I pre-ordered this game in August. Each month I read that it will be published the NEXT month. When can we expect to see it?
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By Torben, November 30, 2009 @ 6:58 pm
Hi Kirby, we advised that it would be arriving Dec 7th in our warehouse barring any problems in customs and we would be shipping them right away from there. If you have any other issues please advise me at torben@valleygames.ca
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